Silent Storm
Ships To Retail is the press release from Encore, announcing that the World
War II strategy/RPG is now available in North America. Here's a bit from their
description of what's being offered:

Gamers choose to play on the side of
the Axis or Allied forces, select their squad, and customize their characters
from over 40 male or female operatives. Each squad member can be created from a
variety of nationalities, and will possess a unique personality, background and
in-game dialog. Player units will also benefit from a rich character development
system, with 9 preset skills for each character, and over 50 skills that can be
developed throughout the course of the game. This enables players to use their
own game style, from brute force to cunning stealth. With over 75 authentic WWII
weapons, the path to victory unfolds through a campaign of 24 non-linear daytime
and night missions, and includes randomly generated encounters of varying styles
and difficulty.

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The gameplay / combat is awesome! There is a mission where one has to retrieve some documents from a building thats full of booby traps. Its cool to just have someone trigger a mine, and when the *entire building* collapses in a massive chainreaction of explosions, get the documents from the rubble.

However, because everything can be destroyed, sometimes characters get stuck in basements and can't get out again. (They can climb out if they have something to grab on to, but this is not always the case.) Its good to check for these situs w/o waiting until the end of the mission.

Mild criticisms: The story is a bit uninspired, the characters not as strong/funny as JA2, and the ending is unspectacular. Plus, maybe I just didn't get it, but the scouts seem to be useless.